The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all.

Politics, n. A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.

No free man shall be taken or imprisoned or dispossessed or outlawed or exiled, or in any way destroyed, nor will we go upon him, nor will we send against him except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.

On the loftiest throne in the world, we still sit only on our own rump.

Every country has the government it deserves.

It is impossible to tell which of the two dispositions we find in men is more harmful in a republic, that which seeks to maintain an established position or that which has none but seeks to acquire it.

The more corrupt the republic, the more numerous the laws.

You should never have your best trousers on when you go out to fight for freedom and truth.

What experience and history teach is this—that nations and governments have never learned anything from history or acted upon any lessons they might have drawn from it.

Treaties, you see, are like girls and roses: they last while they last.

People revere the Constitution yet know so little about it—and that goes for some of my fellow senators.

Whether for good or evil, it is sadly inevitable that all political leadership requires the artifices of theatrical illusion. In the politics of a democracy, the shortest distance between two points is often a crooked line.

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.